save the fatherland, when every citizen brings everything and sacrifices everything—I must call out at least to those in whose breast there beats a Russian heart, and to whom the word 'nobility' still means something. Why talk about which of us is more to blame! I am perhaps more to blame than anyone; perhaps I received you too sternly in the beginning; perhaps, by excessive suspiciousness, I repulsed those of you who sincerely wished to be of use to me, though I, for my part, could also reproach them. If they indeed loved justice and the good of their country, they ought not to have been offended by the haughtiness of my treatment, they ought to have suppressed their own ambition and sacrificed themselves. It cannot be that I would have failed to notice their selflessness and lofty love of the good and not finally have accepted their useful and intelligent advice. After all, the subordinate ought rather to adjust to the character of his superior, than the superior to the character of his subordinate. That is at least more rightful, and easier, since the subordinates have one superior, while the superior has hundreds of subordinates. But let us leave aside who is the more to blame. The point is that it is time for us to save our country; that our country is perishing, not now from an invasion of twenty foreign nations, but from ourselves; that beyond the rightful administration, another administration has been formed, much stronger than the rightful one. They have set their own conditions; everything has been evaluated, and the prices have even become common knowledge. And no ruler, be he wiser even than all other lawgivers and rulers, has enough power to correct the evil, however much he may restrict the actions of bad officials by appointing other officials to watch over them. Nothing will be successful until each one of us feels that, just as in the epoch when people took arms and rose up against the enemy, so he must rise up against falsity. As a Russian, as one bound to you by ties of blood, of one and the same blood, I now address you. I address those of you who have at least some notion of what nobility of mind is. I invite you to remember the duty each man faces in any place. I invite you to consider your duty more closely, and the obligation of your earthly service, because we all have only a dim idea of it now, and we hardly . . .[xvi]
Примечания
1
The city of Tula, some hundred miles south of Moscow, most famous for its gunsmiths—immortalized by Nikolai Leskov (1831-95) in his
2
August von Kotzebue (1761-1819) was a German playwright who lived for some years in Russia, where his plays were very successful. Suspected (rightly) of being an agent of the tsar, he was stabbed to death in the theater by a German student named Sand. Cora and Rolla are characters in his plays
3
The Order of St. Anna (i.e., St. Anne, mother of the Virgin) had two degrees, one worn on the neck, the other on the breast. The star was the decoration of the Order of St. Stanislas, a Polish civil order founded in 1792, which began to be awarded in Russia in 1831.
4
A tax farmer was a private person authorized by the government to collect various taxes in exchange for a fixed fee. The practice was obviously open to abuse, and it was abolished by the reforms of the emperor Alexander II in the 1860s.
5
Russians sometimes affected the uvular French
6
The
7
Pavel Petrovich is the emperor Paul I (1754-1801), son of Peter III (1728-62), whose life was cut short by the machinations of his wife, who thus became the empress Catherine II, called the Great (1729-96). Paul I also came to an untimely end, at the hands of conspirators headed by Count Pahlen. Marshal Mikhail Illarion-ovich Kutuzov (1745-1813), prince of Smolensk, after losing to Napoleon at the battle of Austerlitz in 1805, successfully led the defense of Russia against the French invasion of 1812.
8
The six-week Advent fast leading up to Christmas is sometimes called St. Philip's fast, because it begins on the day after the saint's feast day (November 14).
9
Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), close to the German border in what is now the Czech Republic, is known for its salutary hot springs. The Caucasus also has hot springs, mineral waters, and mountain air.
